Episode Two: The Electric Version
by this-tornado
Summary: Cat and the Doctor find themselves three thousand years in the future, but they face something he's seen before - in 18th century France.
1. Full Spectrum of Light

"Isn't it a little small?"

He didn't quite sigh with exasperation or roll his eyes at the comment, but he did think about it. He loved the whole new-companion-smell and all that, but there were limits to the number of times he could hear the exact same things before he went crazy. "Just take a look."

She made a face, obvious trepidation her stance as she eyed the worn police box sitting there, neatly within one of the commuter parking spaces. She trusted him, trusted him more than she probably should, for someone she'd known for such a short period of time, but if he was having her on… Gently, as if expecting resistance, she poked her head between the swinging doors- and, right on cue, gasped loudly before turning to gape at him. "It's bigger on the inside!"

He mouthed it along with her. It never ceased to amaze him how many people who so very surprised by that one simple fact. "Is it?" He asked, as though he'd only recently just noticed.

She continued to gape at him for a moment, not really registering anything he said but looking remarkably more animated now that there was one of those pretty, harmless impossibilities to prove that not everything resulted in blown-up schools. Turning back, she stuck her head back in, marveling.

It was the most unassuming little police box she'd ever seen, just faded enough that she wouldn't have looked twice at it on the street, if she'd even registered its presence (which, now that she gave it a moment's thought, made perfect sense. He certainly wouldn't want random strangers poking around inside it), but on the inside- it was _massive_. The center was dominated by some deeply impressive, tower-like machinery surrounded by all sorts of complicated buttons and switches and dials (really, exactly what one might expect an overly-complicated time-machine to look like). The rest of the room was wide and open, with random long, sinuous supports holding up the ceiling, far further above her, and far more domed, than the box should have held.

Trying to contain her amazement, she stepped forward gingerly, as though expected the grated floor to bite. Slinking to the side, she circled around the center piece, marveling. It was simply impossible. Absolutely impossible. Carefully, so very carefully, she reached out to stroke a railing. When it felt solid, really was solid, really was there, she turned to him. "It's _real_." It was a whisper, packed with realization that not everything had to be as terrible as it had been; that there were really lovely impossibilities. That there might be no impossible.

He grinned back at her. There might be some repetition in the first comments made about the TARDIS, but he never did get tired of that look of amazement. "Isn't it brilliant?"

"What is it?" It had to have a proper name; nothing was this fantastic without a proper name. She continued turning, still marveling. From what she could tell from this cursory exploration, there were even more rooms tucked away, only increasing the amazement that it all fit in that little police box.

"The TARDIS. Time And Relative Dimension In Space." He strode about with her as though thoroughly comfortable inside this odd building/ship/whatever, reaching out to run a hand along the console as though saying hello to an old friend. "She's the last one." That fondness was in his voice as well, enough that she didn't question the gendering and personification.

He turned back to her, hands in his pockets and leaning against the console, a spark of that reckless joy, the excitement she'd only glimpsed earlier in his eyes. "So, where would you like to go? Forwards or backwards?"

She blinked at him, not having totally processed the magnitude of everything she'd been shown in the last few minutes. Here she was, inside a- a TARDIS, she reminded herself, it had a real name, a TARDIS larger on the inside than it was on the outside. If that didn't vouch for it being capable of whatever he said it was, she didn't know what would. Forwards or backwards? What did he mean- Oh. It hit her. Forwards or backwards in _time_. The idea of being able to make those sorts of decisions, as anything more than the sorts of silly conversations had at three in the morning, was just… amazing. "Um…" She bit at her lip, still swallowed up in the marvel. "Forwards." It was all about the possibility right now, and the future only made sense with that.

"How far?" He'd started flipping switches and twirling dials, moving around the great, circuitous array of mechanics as though he knew exactly what he was doing, like there was some great overlaying plan to travel by police box.

She hovered closer, fascinated by the process but unwilling to get in the way. "Really far." She wanted to see what she'd never be able to see, something fantastic and impossible.

"Really really far?" He asked again, eyes still with that manic glee that seemed to fuel him, as he continued throwing handles and hitting buttons.

She wasn't able to contain it any more, nearly hopping up and down with the sheer excitement of it all. "Really _really_ far!"

"Alright," He seemed to have done whatever it was that he needed to do to get going, hand hovering over a final handle. "Hold on!" And he threw it.

Her laughter, over-bright and gleeful, accompanied their wild tumbling into space.

-

It was like nothing she'd ever experienced before, roller coaster or theme park ride, over before she'd had a chance to do more than grab on and laugh her way into the unknown. Flustered and wind-blown, she looked up to find him equally fluttered but only that much more invigorated.

He dusted himself off, obviously used to travel like this (how long had he been rocketing about time and space? She had a feeling like that would only leave her with more questions than it would answer). "Would you like to do the honors?" he offered, with a quick gesture towards those double doors. Maybe it was too much at once; maybe he should have slowed down, given her more time to adjust to the companion-role. He'd told her so little about himself, not realizing how thoroughly he'd uprooted her and whisked her away. But he'd so wanted to show her something that was lovely, something that wasn't an icy predator from another time. He'd been alone for a while, not the longest time he'd ever been on his own, but it had been long enough that he wanted this to work, didn't want to send her running off scared because there'd been too much at once, or because she'd seen too much of the wrong thing.

She blinked at him again, taking a quick moment to gather herself back into something resembling control. This was all going too fast, almost too much for her to handle. The idea that only heart beats ago she'd been standing in twenty-first century London, and that now she might be absolute anywhere… it was just too vast for her, not so close on the heels of everything else. Trepidation obvious, she stepped towards the door, not sure if she was more afraid that it would turn out to be a mistake, or that it would turn out that he was right. Taking another deep breath, she reached out and brushed the doors apart.

And stepped out into something wonderful.

-

The streets were full and bustling, great fantastic lamps dangling above them, a shining golden light that danced across the streams of people. The buildings lining the streets shone with elaborate glasswork and stone, reflecting back the happy chaos of the streets. There might not have been flying cars or an overabundance of chrome, (in fact, something about it seemed oddly vintage, as though she was seeing something very old reworked), but she was stunned all the same, gaping in such a way, that had any of the passersby been able to see her, they would have thought that she was very simple.

"Fifty-third century," He remarked to break the silence. He loved this part, the way she seemed to be almost paralyzed with amazement. "Three thousand years," He squinted up at stars just lightly becoming visible against the dusky sky, "and half a universe away from home." He stepped around her into the street, as though he did this every day, crashing about from one end of the sky to the other, hurtling about time. Because, really, that was exactly what he did. "Catherine Davies, welcome to the future."


	2. Lights and Magnets

The streets were full and bustling, great fantastic lamps dangling above them, a shining golden light that danced across the streams of people. The buildings lining the streets shone with elaborate glasswork and stone, reflecting back the happy chaos of the streets. There might not have been flying cars or an overabundance of chrome, (in fact, something about it seemed oddly vintage, as though she was seeing something very old reworked), but she was stunned all the same, gaping in such a way, that had any of the passersby been able to see her, they would have thought that she was very simple.

"Fifty-third century," He remarked to break the silence. He loved this part, the way she seemed to be almost paralyzed with amazement. "Three thousand years," He squinted up at stars just lightly becoming visible against the dusky sky, "and half a universe away from home." He stepped around her into the street, as though he did this every day, crashing about from one end of the sky to the other, hurtling about time. Because, really, that was exactly what he did. "Catherine Davies, welcome to the future."

"What's this?" She pointed as they walked along the busy street, far too cheery to mind being jostled.

"Telescopic stabilization module. Keeps ships even in a solar storm." He explained, far more enthusiastically than the subject of stabilizers really merited.

"That?" She was trying to turn as she walked, see as much of everything as she could without knocking anyone over, though it got her a few annoyed glances from folk attempting to get home only to be delayed by this obvious tourist.

"Tribophysical waveform macro-kinetic extrapolator." He would have given more, could have waxed rhapsodic about the various uses and drawbacks of everything they saw, but she'd already moved on, pointing and asking, wanting to know as much as she could. Wanting all the names, the proper names, for the wonder about her.

"This?"

He looked at her almost disapprovingly, as though this was a little bit too simple. "A banana."

"They still have bananas three thousand years in the future?" She seemed so surprised, as though it would be impossible for anything familiar to have survived for so long.

"And longer! Bananas are good!" He seemed slightly offended on the behalf of all bananas, as if she was insinuating that they didn't quite deserve to spread across half the universe. "You people always seem to assume that you'll destroy everything. Has it ever occurred to you that bananas are a perfectly resilient fruit?"

She ignored the question, still twisting and turning, trying to soak up the sights. She didn't know how long they would have to look around – was this a limited tour? Could he go anywhere for any length of time, or was it one of those things that started to reverse themselves after a while? She didn't know anything about time travel other than the occasional movie plot, so she had no idea what sorts of rules there were, because everything had to have rules. Lost in her own thoughts, she hardly noticed when she bumped rather forcefully into a suited man going in the opposite direction.

"Excuse me," he snarled, obviously having not gotten the memo that today was be nice to the tourists day. "Watch where you're going!"

"He's speaking English!" She was far too excited by the prospect of the enduring language, as well as not having to mime to interact with anyone on this far planet, to be at all rebuked.

"No, you're only hearing him English," The Doctor explained, nodding towards various signposts and flyers that were also in her native tongue. "TARDIS translates for you. Fewer misunderstandings that way…" he trailed off, as if suggesting that he had a few stories to tell regarding misunderstandings.

"That's fantastic!" Cat felt that she should object on some sort of principle level as far as strange time travel machines getting into her head without asking, but the idea of being able to go absolutely anywhere without having to worry about a language barrier was simply too convenient. Though, it was starting to bother her, really. Everyone was starting to look all the same, while she'd imagined that the future would have, you know, aliens in it. Not just humanoid sorts… Well, it wasn't like she knew anything. She paused before a particularly impressive display of all sorts of knickknacks. "Can we go in?"

"Of course," He held the door for her, as if she'd actually had a chance to touch it, it might have been any length of time before she'd finally actually opened it. "I love little shops. Does some people a world of good it does, getting to shop."

It was a good thing that the shop was empty besides to two of them, as her incessant marveling probably would have either marked her out as a complete tourist, or irritated the hell out of anyone actually trying to accomplish anything.

The shelves were stocked with all sorts of intricacies, all with that same feeling of being rather old, however fantastically futuristic the styling and materials. Cat peered at an ornate clock, enjoying the intricate swirling of the craftsmanship. It was so delicate, really, for something that was making such a loud ticking sound- She paused for a moment, watching the hands. They weren't moving; the clock didn't seem to be wound. "Do you hear that?" She asked, intrigued.

The Doctor did not seem nearly as unperturbed as she was. Rather, he seemed momentarily alarmed. "Yes, I've heard that sound before." He paused, glasses disappearing as quickly as they had appeared. "Its clockwork."

"Well, you know, clocks, they do tend to have clockwork," Cat didn't quite see the cause for any sort of alarm, though the look on his face did work to cut through her excited fervor. She knew him well enough, considering how little she really knew him, to know that he wasn't exactly the sort of man to scare easily.

"Not this kind." He'd reached for the screwdriver, mouth settling into a severe line. "Space-age clockwork is very distinctive, particularly this sort of craftsmanship..." Clearly, wherever he'd run into them, it hadn't been at a party.

Intent on his scanning or whatever he was doing with that funny little buzzing device of his (she hadn't quite figured it out entirely, as "sonic screwdriver" meant about as much as "Tribophysical waveform macro-kinetic extrapolator" had, which is to say, none at all), Cat started when there was a sudden motion to the side, as someone unfolded themselves from by the doorway.

The Doctor looked about as surprised as she had, not having gotten to checking out that area of the room yet. Keeping the screwdriver out, he placed himself between the figure and Cat. "There you are. Now, what are you up to this time? Looking for more parts?" He called out. They were at about the right time, so it did make a certain amount of sense…

Cat was a little confused as to exactly what the Doctor was saying, until the figure's head turned to look at them, catching the light, revealing a clear shell filled with all sorts of elaborate gears and wheels. Suddenly, the loud clockwork made perfect sense. "It's gorgeous," She commented, not quite seeing what all the fuss was about.

"Cat, I need you to stay very, very still," As much as he enjoyed explaining things, he didn't think he was going to have the time.

"Do you require assistance?" The voice was mechanical and stilted, but clear enough. The head tilted towards them, a creepily human gesture.

"What are you doing here?" The Doctor questioned, not about to let the innocuous shopkeeper-type question deter him.

"Do you have a permit?" It questioned on, slightly more insistent, head tilting even farther to the side

"What is your purpose here? Scanning more brains?" He repeated, even more insistent.

There was another grinding of gears, and the thing moved forward, again in that stiffly human fashion. It was really rather unnerving, now that she thought about it…

"Please present your permit." It was about as firm as a machinated voice could be, stretching out a toolkit like hand to accept whatever these permits might be.

"Leave them alone, they're with me," Everyone, save the clockwork man, started at intruding voice. The woman had come from the back, with enough authority to suggest that she belonged there.

It turned to look at her, more grinding of those varicolored cogs. "Please present a permit."

"They don't need one if they're with me, I know the rights," She insisted, though there was something in her voice that suggested that for all her intended authority, that she wasn't sure if this was going to work. So it was with a visible sigh of relief that she shut the door as it stalked out. "Awful things, they are," She muttered, mostly under her breath, before turning towards the two of them. "Who are you, anyway?"

"I'm the Doctor, and this is Cat," He gestured at her, pocketing the screwdriver as he did so. "We were just passing through. What, exactly, was that?" He inquired, mouth settling back into that severe line. "And what did it mean by permit?"

"Agyness." She answered with a nod, before jerking her head towards the back of the shop. "You'll want to sit down; it's going to be a story."

-

"It started with the trouble with the colonies," She began, just slightly conspiratorially, as she put the kettle on. "Delta and Epsilon. They wanted certain rights, more representation. There was a lot of sympathetic feelings in the capital here, you know, as its really only fair." The cups she poured were each roughly the size of a human head, fragrant and steaming.

Cat inhaled, letting the familiar smell (because even three thousand years later and half a universe away, tea was tea) relax her. Apparently, having absolutely no idea what was going on was something that one just had to get used to when traveling with the Doctor. She watched him over the rim of her cup, as he listened to Agyness, eyes unreadable as he listened so very intently.

"That's when the council started cracking down. Immigration restrictions and curfews and what have you." The steam swirled, delicate. "Keeping the peace, they called it." She managed the euphemism with a straight face. "The replacement policemen were just the next step. Said they kept things from getting personal."

He stood, not seeming to want to sit and stay still, not that he ever really stayed still. That same restless, manic energy that keep him going, meant he ended up places like this, was exactly the sort of driving force that kept him from settling for tea in cozy little shops, not for more than a moment. "You said the council set this all up?" It was that same talking-to-himself way of talking to them, or was it that same way of talking-to-them way of talking to himself? "I think we're going to have to pay them a visit."

"You said you've seen them before," Agyness asked, apropos of nothing, a line of concern knitting her brows. It was the first thing she'd noticed about them, the way he looked at them. It was why she'd stepped in, really – she didn't always stick her neck out for a stranger, that was for sure. It was the look in his eyes – there had been an understanding there, and understanding was what she needed, what they all needed.

He nodded, pacing a little. "They were functioning as repair droids on a heavily damaged ship," He began, glossing over some of the more personal, details. It was possible that some of the antipathy he had for the clockwork creations wasn't so much tied up in their actions towards him and his, but in the loose connection that had kept him from showing Reinette the stars, "and they hadn't been told that the crew wasn't on the menu."

Cat didn't need him to fill in the blanks to get an idea of the general ruthlessness of a binary code without empathy, the idea of beating hearts in walls and eyes in scopes exactly the sort of thing that would explain his knee-jerk reaction. It added another layer to permit-questioning as well – what exactly happened when you didn't have a permit? Agyness hadn't said, and Cat had a feeling that she probably didn't want to know. It was as much as she should have expected, really, that even shining cities like this one had their seamy sides, but expecting it didn't really make it any better.

"If you want to check it out, I'll point you in the right direction." Agyness decided, placing her cup down with a final sort of rattle. "But it's too late to be seen showing the way." They hadn't quite noticed the falling, gently darkness, but she'd gotten used to needing to, having to keep track. "I've done enough as it is."


	3. Bolts and Wires

Cat gathered the sides of her borrowed coat closer, trying to ignore the sharp edge of uneasiness. It had gotten dark while they'd been inside, discussing politics and clockwork men over tea, and the walk, however quick, had been far too long to wander in the emptiness. She was a city girl, London born and bred, and the whole concept of a curfew, streets empty while the night still young, bothered her more than the political abstracts.

They'd kept quiet, not really wanting to be discovered, though she wasn't really sure what good quiet was against mechanical constructs. He seemed lost in thought, something that seemed an occupational hazard, mulling over whatever these clockwork things had meant to him. Because she wasn't stupid, liked to think that she wouldn't have made it into university if she hadn't been, and she'd caught that he hadn't told them everything. She watched as he fiddled with the locking mechanism, worked on opening the door. She supposed that any man willing to hurtle about universe, knocking from end to end as he went, saving this planet and liberating that, was entitled to his secrets.

"Come on," He murmured, opening the door that, for a place of governance, had been a little bit too easy to break into. He really hadn't intended to go all quiet on her, thinking. But he didn't like seeing them, didn't want to play nicely where they came in – not that he knew whether his antipathy was a holdover from what he had see them do, or the loose connection that had kept him from showing Reinette the stars.

The back hallway (they weren't _quite_ brazen enough to waltz in through the front door) was vaulted and paneled, looking for all the word like something that could have been seen in any earth-like financial district.

"Well, some things never change," She muttered, eyebrow raised, as she poked at the crimson carpeting.

He chuckled a bit in spite of himself. "Never mess with the classics." He wandered over, really a bit too comfortable with the whole process of breaking, entering and skulking about. "Hm… where do we start, where do we start..." It was the talking to himself again, as he went through the directory someone had been so kind as to post on a nearby wall. "Aha. The programming control. Fancy a look?" He nodded towards the marble-and-carpet staircase, looking rather more animated now that they were actually doing something.

"Not about to head back after just looking at the carpet, were we?" Cat responded, hands in her pockets as she followed him. The slightly more home-like interior had steadied her a little, though she was still on edge. It helped that this wasn't her first time with the Doctor, however different the circumstances. Wandering about an alien planet worrying about alien metal creatures with- she paused, before discarding the thought. _That_ would be silly. Shaking it off, she kept to the side of the hall, hoping to pad along as quietly and unobtrusively as her namesake.

They were partway down a hall decorated much the way the lower floor had been, before they heard that ominous clockwork sound. "Quick," He murmured, yanking her into the first available room, which was, unfortunately, the fifty-first-century broom closet.

Squashed rather uncomfortably close, with something mop-like digging into her kidney, Cat tried to quiet the sound of her breathing. She didn't really think it was going to help, after all, if she'd been in charge of creating futuristic police-robots, she would have at least equipped them with heat sensors or something, but she couldn't help but try. As the stiff footsteps got closer, she closed her eyes (again, not that it was really going to help), forehead pressed against his chest to try and keep herself from fidgeting with the stress of it all.

Why it was that her heartbeat, something that she didn't notice at all normally, was sudden so terribly loud-

Something about the sound/feeling of the heartbeat seemed off. She rocked from one side to another, as lightly as she could, distracted for a moment from the fact that she was hiding in a broom closet to avoid police robots. Left side, there it was, a heartbeat. Right side, there it was again, a heartbeat. Again, the left, a heartbeat. Again, the right, a heartbeat. Sudden realization dawned, and she looked up at him, trying to contain herself.

"You have two hearts!" She mouthed, gesturing towards her own and holding up two fingers.

He flapped his hands at her, (the best he could in such cramped and fraught circumstances) in the universal signal for _I know, shut up_.

She nodded at him, trying to signal that she understood the implications, a little bit relieved to have a definitive answer. She supposed it ought to bother her more than it did, but it explained more than it didn't, really, him being an alien.

The clockwork paused outside, interrupting their lovely little discovery party. They froze, hardly breathing, until it went on, footsteps in that same stilted-but-humanlike pattern.

"So you're an alien?" She clarified as quietly as she could while still making audible conversation as they tumbled back into the hallway.

He gave her a look as if to say that she should have worked that out already. It was, again, one of those conversations he'd had too many times to really take any enjoyment in. "Timelord."

She nodded at him, satisfied with a name, even if it hadn't really meant anything than suggesting that whatever he was, they took themselves _very_ seriously. "Where are you from, then?" Because even if the word was nothing more than a place on a map she did not have, it was a place. A pinning down, a definition, so to speak, of the Doctor.

"Gallifrey." There was a fondness in his voice, as much fondness as one could put into a whisper, though it was tinged with something. Nostalgia? Mourning? They had to be too quiet to tell. "The Shining World of the Seven Systems."

She nodded again, wondering what sort of place it might have to be, to create someone like him. It had to be very beautiful, nothing known as a shining world wouldn't be, but there was something in his eyes – she had a feeling that there was something very terrible as well, something to explain the depths in those old eyes...


	4. A New Parade of Faith and Sparks

The programming control looked an awful lot like she might have expected it to, though the center was dominated by an elaborate array of delicate tools, thin and almost surgical in their precision. "Makes sense, makes sense, got to have a place to wind them after they've been programmed," It was that talking to himself thing again. "Now, where did they put the control matrixes…" He started going through the various screens surrounding the winding station, obviously looking for something, taking some sort of meaning from the binary.

Cat wasn't really all that interested in the numbers, not really ever having been all that good computer things. She'd used to drive her roommate crazy with it. She paused for a second, struck by how surrealistic it all was. It was just too weird, thinking about her roommate while she was so very far away. Like it had all happened hundreds of years ago, instead of earlier that day (was it still that day? The passage of time made so much less sense now). Shaking it off, she started looking around the edges of the room, at the stacked files and whatnot. Flicking through, she paused over a map of the star system. "What sort of colonies are Delta and Epsilon?"

He had those foxy sort of glasses on again, continuing to talk to himself. "Definitional operations, no, security authorizations, no... Everything's an absolute mess." He sounded like he disapproved. "Had some cowboys in here, messing about. Had to have an idea of what they were doing, this isn't the work of an amateur, though they're not nearly as clever as they think they are-" He paused, suddenly realizing that she'd been talking to him. "What?"

"What sort of colonies are Delta and Epsilon?" She repeated, studying the map.

"Mining mostly," He looked up at her, momentarily distracted from his monologue. "Why?"

"That's the sort of place where you'd need an all-purpose repair droid, isn't it?" She flipped over the sheet, holding up the detailed illustration one of the clockwork creatures.

He looked at her, obviously thinking faster than she could quite conceive, putting something together. "Brilliant!" He dove back into the binary, scanning with renewed enthusiasm. "That would explain everything-"

"Explain what?" She looked at him, a little bit puzzled.

"All this code," He looked just a little bit excited, obviously enjoying solving his puzzles. "Here, and here," he moved from one monitor to another, pulling up various sections. "It all makes perfect sense."

"Really? Does it?" She raised an eyebrow at him.

"Well, it does when you consider that all of this," he gestured across a highlighted section, as though the symbols were supposed to mean something to her, "isn't supposed to be here."

"Mmm." She responded, nodding. At least he'd used small words that time.

"It's right here, underneath all the other code – took someone clever enough to know how to hide some of it at least, but either they weren't clever enough to hide all of it or they didn't think they had to worry about it, because here it is." He narrowed the highlighted section, obviously enjoying the workmanship.

She nodded again, hoping he would get to the point eventually, because she still hadn't the foggiest idea what exactly he was getting at, and it seemed that that was becoming something of a routine.

"Usually the processors in something made of clockwork are fairly simple, relatively speaking, due to the limitations within the power sourcing. But this, now this is a brilliant work around," He had those glasses pushed up, had run a hand through his hair until it rumpled, still more enthusiastic than the situation really merited, decidedly more perky now that he had something concrete, "where the second set of parameters weren't running at all."

"If they weren't running, then why are they interesting?"

He gave her that look of slight pity, as though he was really rather sorry for her that she couldn't quite keep up. "Because it was set up with an external trigger system. A kill code, which completely overwrites everything they were originally programmed with. Someone's converted them into their own private revolutionary army. And considering how little of an empathy circuit they were originally designed with, this is very, very bad."

"So someone's using them against them," She distilled, feeling like she actually grasped what was going on now.

"Exactly." He finished shifting through the numbers again, still looking almost a little bit impressed. "Your classic double agent."

"So, what are we doing to do about it?" She asked, curious, leaning up against the desk as she looked at him, waiting.

He looked at her, knowing that eventually he would have to tell her that he couldn't interfere everywhere, couldn't change everything. But this wasn't one of those times, this wasn't a fixed point in space and time, this was something a little more personal, and now that he'd gotten himself this far, he wasn't about to up and leave. "The problem is that it's not quite as simple as just eliminating the second set of parameters," he began, talking to himself again. "What we want to do is take out the entire system."

"Like a virus?"

"Close enough." The glasses were back down again, and he was delving through code again. "They aren't complicated enough machines to really run a virus per se, but all we'd really need to do is fry the control matrix, remove the power sourcing…" He trailed off, muttering more technobabble that didn't actually mean anything.

"That might be a little difficult," She looked rather suddenly alarmed.

"Not particularly," he protested, as though she'd impugned his ability to come up with brilliantly complex solutions at the drop of a hat.

"I meant with them watching," She clarified, gesturing to the fact that the clockwork sound that they'd been ignoring wasn't the machinery within the room, but a rather unpleasant looking pair standing in the doorway. They didn't seem to simply be permit checkers this time, judging from the far more deadly looking implements jutting from their toolkit hands. That steady, clanging beat didn't help either, and for a single, fanciful moment, she was reminded of that story she'd read in school, with the tell-tale heart beating away under the floorboards…

"Well, that is a problem," He allowed, continuing to fiddle with whatever it was that he was fiddling with.

They clanked forward, a step and another, heads twisting in that freakishly human-like way that they had.

"Doctor…" She began, backing away towards a corner of the room, rather wishing that they'd decided to place the programming control in a room with multiple exits.

"Hang on," He was typing very quickly now, absorbed in whatever it was that he was doing.

"No, really, Doctor…" She insisted, pressed up against the corner of the wall and the file cabinet as the things advanced, nearly halfway across the room.

"You're going to have to trust me," He insisted right back, sparing the briefest second to lock eyes with her over his busy fingers.

She was unable to deny the fact that she did trust him, far more than she thought she probably trusted anyone, though she figured that made sense, him saving her life a few times already. But all the same- She closed her eyes, freezing as the thing got closer-

And let out the breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding as the things suddenly made a screeching sort of feedback sound, before just flopping sideways.

"See?" He gave her a smug little look over the terminal, obviously pleased with his timing.

She couldn't do anything other than give him a decidedly unamused stare.

"So, did we fix it?" She asked, as they watched the sun come up over the pretty façade of the city.

He made one of those equivocating sort of faces around whatever it was that he was eating (it had looked rather like a satsuma, but she really couldn't be sure). "Depends on what you mean by fixed. I wiped the system, they won't be able to run anything on the repair droids other than, well, repairs. So that's something." Munch.

"So it's over?" She asked, because she had to, even if the naiveté of it bothered her. She hoped it was one of those things that got better with time, that once she'd adjusted to hurtling about from one end of the universe to another she'd know what were the intelligent questions to ask.

"It's never over," That was the truth of it, at the heart of things. That nothing was ever over. "Besides," He smiled at her, offering a satsuma slice. "Where would the fun be in that?"

**AN: Sorry about the delay folks, finals happened and sort of ate my life (as well as part of the middle of the story), but I needed to just sort of end this so I could move on. So here you go.**


End file.
